The bigger question is "Why 3?"
Then again we have the "4G" which people automatically go "Ah, iphone". Maybe the D'ni Steve Jobs heralded the newest version of the Guild of Maintainers dPhone 3. AKA the 3, for short.

Shame, I bet if D'ni hadn't fallen we'd have rudimentary speech-recognition built into our KIs and could ask them questions. "KIRI, what's the temperature?" "It is the same as always. This is an underground cavern."

_________________You know, I wish we would learn Atrus loved the 1812 overture, and in turn we had a copy for our relto.
That's right, a canon canen cannon!

Shame, I bet if D'ni hadn't fallen we'd have rudimentary speech-recognition built into our KIs and could ask them questions. "KIRI, what's the temperature?" "It is the same as always. This is an underground cavern."

Some of the /commands give amusing responses that I'm now forever going to imagine in Siri's voice.

Admittedly he'll probably say "I'm not sure about that, I think the whole backstory of the thing was Rich's idea" and RAWA will decline comment, and we'll be left no further.

Or alternately RAWA will come on the forums, and explain that it was the third version of the device, or maybe that the actual description for the device when taking just the first phonemes or something is remarkably similar to the D'ni for three, and thus the term stuck as a nickname for the prototype and then later the functional model (hence the 3 on the back, it's a joke).

Shame they couldn't really have an acronym... I'm not a linguist but it could but the word for three seems to be what, two 'letters' long at most?

(Edit postpend) I'm actually betting the REAL reason is "It was a joke, as this is the third design for the game as a whole we settled on, plus the D'ni for three looks like k-i, and we liked the name "Key" (/edit)

_________________You know, I wish we would learn Atrus loved the 1812 overture, and in turn we had a copy for our relto.
That's right, a canon canen cannon!

(Edit postpend) I'm actually betting the REAL reason is "It was a joke, as this is the third design for the game as a whole we settled on, plus the D'ni for three looks like k-i, and we liked the name "Key" (/edit)

actually I've always called it a "kay - eye" in my head. Not key. But that's just me.

Shame they couldn't really have an acronym... I'm not a linguist but it could but the word for three seems to be what, two 'letters' long at most?

The D'ni word for three is sehn or sen. Interestingly, the word for structure, senaren, is very similar and is part of the basis for the name of Gahreesen which we know depends heavily on the use of the KI for access. Perhaps there's some connection there.

But, IIRC, the IC explanation was that the DRC found it with the D'ni #3 on the back and thought it was the letters K-I. OOC, I think you're right in that Cyan liked calling it a "key" - short for keyboard, I presume.